Learning the Open Position Notes
Learning the Open Position Notes
Why Learn the Notes?
Learning the names of the notes on the guitar is essential for developing a deep understanding of the guitar fretboard. The study of chords, scales and arpeggios will all but require it.
Knowing the names of the notes is also crucial for understanding musical concepts generally, as well as for reading music.
One of your first goals should be to learn the names of the natural (C Major) notes in the open position.
Learning these notes will help you to see and understand more clearly the many chords constructed from the C major scale.
Learning concepts versus memorizing by rote
This exercise will come much easier if you learn the underlying principles themselves, and use them as a tool to solve problems, rather than if you merely memorize the notes.
Prerequisite Knowledge
To begin this lesson, you must at minimum possess the following knowledge:
- Understanding of the C Major Scale notes, and the pattern of steps they follow
- Understand the 7 notes in the musical alphabet and the 12 notes in the chromatic scale.
- Know the names of the open strings.
Method
Starting from the low (thick) E string: for each string, think about how to climb up the notes of the C major scale. For instance, on the E string you would play E, F, and G.
When the next note in the scale is the same as the next open string, play the open string and continue from that open string.
For example, after playing E, F and G on the lowest string, you would not play A on that string because A can also be played on the open string. So you would play A on the 5th string and continue to B and C on that string, and so forth.
Results
If you follow the above procedure to construct the scale, the results will appear as below.
Important: merely memorizing the notes, while useful, is not enough. Knowing the method by which the notes can be named and identified is key to understanding the fretboard.
Key Tasks
- Recite the names of the notes as you play up (and down!) the C major scale in open position.
- Recite the names of the notes horizontally across each fret: for example, the first fret is F, A♯, D♯, G♯, C, F. Repeat for other frets.
- For each note in the C major scale, play it in every location of the scale. For instance, for “F”, play all three of the F’s that appear in the scale, and repeat for the rest of the notes.
